After that, Anatole didn’t bother sleeping anymore. So he laid down beside in the hammock and held her at night, while the crew tried every anti-magic ritual they could think of to break free from Morvenna.
The second night, she woke him by trying to climb over him. Not aggressive, not frantic. Just a calm, deliberate attempt to remove his arm and get to her feet, her body moving with a sleepwalker's eerie purpose while her eyes stared at nothing. He'd caught her, pulled her back, held her against his chest while she gasped her way back to consciousness.
"I was there," she said, shaking in his arms. "In the dream. I was standing in front of the door.” She gave a breath that was close to a sob. "Anatole, I was opening it. In the dream, I was opening it and it feltright.Like coming home."
He tried distraction. Filled her days with activity, with lessons and work and anything that might occupy her mind enough to give the curse less purchase. He taught her to splice rope, to read weather by the shape of the clouds, to handle a cutlass. Gris taught her to cook the crew’s favorite recipes. Sébastien walked her through the ship's inventory, explaining how to keep a crew fed, armed and sailing.
She threw herself into all of it with the fierce concentration of a woman building a wall inside her own mind. During the day, when her hands were busy and her thoughts were occupied, she was almost herself. Sharp, quick, asking questions that surprised the crew with their insight. The omega who'd won at cards and earned her place.
But at night, the wall came down.
On the third night, he tried the only thing left.
It wasn't a decision he made with his captain's mind. It was a decision his wolf made for both of them, somewhere in the hour between midnight and dawn, when Jeanne lay beside him on the main deck staring at the wrong-colored sky and he could smell the pull working on her. Her scent had changed over the past three days. The honeysuckle was still there, the vanilla and the sea salt, but underneath it was something new. A thinness, like a candle flame guttering in a draft. The curse was wearing her down from the inside, and every hour she fought it cost her something she couldn't get back.
"Come below with me," he said.
She looked at him. Her eyes were shadowed, bruised from nights of interrupted sleep and days of fighting an enemy that lived inside her own chest. "The cabin?"
"The cabin. Just us. I'll lock the door."
She didn't ask why. She already knew. Three days of guards and distraction and sleeping on the open deck, and the pull was still winning. They'd tried everything rational. What was left was the thing that had always worked between them, the connection that existed outside strategy and outside the curse's reach.
He locked the cabin door behind them. Checked the windows, the porthole, every point of entry that might allow the hum to penetrate louder than it already did through the floorboards. Then he turned to her.
She was standing in the center of the room, her arms wrapped around herself, and the hum was vibrating through the soles of her bare feet. He could see it in the way she swayed, the slight lean toward the door, the constant gravitational pull that never stopped.
"Look at me," he said. "Not at the floor. Not toward the corridor. At me."
Her eyes found his.
"What do you see?" he asked.
"You. Anatole. My mate who's running out of ideas."
"Then let me try the one I have left." He crossed the space between them and kissed her.
Not gentle. This was a man kissing a woman he was terrified of losing, and the fear made it rough, urgent, his mouth claiming hers with a desperation he didn't try to disguise. His hands fisted in her hair, tilting her head back, and he kissed her the way a drowning man breathed air, like she was the only thing keeping him alive.
She made a sound against his mouth. Not a whimper, not the heat-driven moan he'd learned during those three burning days. A different sound. Relief. Like she'd been waiting for him to stop being careful and just hold on.
"Don't think about the door," he said against her lips. "Just feel me. Stay here with me."
"I'm here." Her hands were pulling at his shirt, yanking it over his head, her fingers spreading across his chest like she needed to confirm he was solid. "I'm here, Anatole."
He stripped her clothes off with none of the patience he'd shown before. Buttons scattered. Fabric tore. He didn't care. He needed her skin against his, needed the scent of them together to fill the room until there was no space left for the curse to occupy. When she was bare, he lifted her, and her legs wrapped around his waist, and her scent bloomed, honeysuckle deepening asher body responded. Slick wet his stomach where she pressed against him.
He carried her to the bed, laid her down, and covered her with his body. All of him. His full weight, his arms braced on either side of her head, his chest against hers so she could feel his heartbeat. He wanted to be everywhere at once, wanted to fill her senses so completely that the door's song couldn't find a gap to slip through.
"Your scent." She was breathing him in, her nose pressed to his throat, her whole body arching up against his. "I need more of it. When I can smell you, the pull gets quieter. Like your scent drowns it out."
He rubbed his beard against her neck, her collarbone, the swell of her breasts. Scenting her the way wolves scented their mates, marking her with the pine-and-salt signature that told every nose on this ship she was claimed. She gasped as the coarse hair of his beard dragged over her nipples, and her hips rolled up against his, seeking friction.
"More," she breathed. "Keep going."
He kissed down her body. Her throat, where her pulse fluttered fast beneath thin skin. The hollow between her collarbones, where the scar from her childhood fall was a silver line against flushed skin. The curve of each breast, taking her nipples into his mouth one at a time, sucking until she cried out and her fingers twisted in his hair.
"Stay with me," he said against her ribs. "Keep your eyes on me, Jeanne."
